


Dark My Light

by DreamsAtDusk



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-07 03:24:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15899910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsAtDusk/pseuds/DreamsAtDusk
Summary: Ruin and Rising AU.  Disaster strikes in the White Cathedral.  Without the hope of Morozova’s third amplifier as salvation, Alina and the Darkling must face the threat of a Shadow Fold overflowing its borders.





	Dark My Light

It was such a small thing upon which to pin their hopes: a pouch of blasting powder, lofted into the Kettle’s master flue on Squaller wind. And below, as chaos grew on his every side, Mal coolly snatched forth a pistol and drew a bead upon it. It was an impossible shot - no, improbable, because it must--

Alina Starkov’s ears and eyes were at war.

She heard the crack of gunfire, felt her eardrums quail under how it clattered against the enclosed space in which they stood. Yet she had seen no flash from the muzzle of the pistol, now dropping as Mal’s arm did likewise. Her perceptions were in limbo for a precious few seconds. Then, the cutting pain of a scream coursing up her throat.

_“MAL!”_

The sound broke wrong against her ears, skewed by earlier assault that was sourced now to a Priestguard’s rifle. For Alina’s world had devolved into red, blooming like a flower from Mal’s chest. She lurched for him, as all around her, the world fell apart.

He had already half buckled by the time she reached his side and in her weakened state, his weight pulled Alina down too. Her knees barked painfully into the floor, Mal draped awkwardly half across her lap. Her hand scrabbled over fresh-stained fabric like a pale spider, trying to pinpoint the origin. Blood, hot and thick, was a profane warmth against the coolness of the White Cathedral.

“Alina. . . Get out of here.” Mal’s eyes found hers. His were wide, not blinking often enough, but staring into hers with an urgency and depth of emotion that made her want to sob. Her fingers found the place where the bullet had entered, causing Mal to gasp. Shouts, rifle fire, the sounds of wood splintering, of falling bodies, buffeted her ears. The acrid smell of burning grease ate at the air. “Mal. . . “

His hand hooked limply at her wrist. Then went still.

_A golden door and the rush of sunlight and—_

The world became water.

She did not hear Zoya’s voice rising above the cacophony, strident, fringed in despair. She did not see Genya, scarred face shaped with terror and determination at once, bulling past a guard with the strength of the desperate and stretching a hand toward Alina. Lamplight pocked around her as Priestguards circled close. The sounds of madness grew further away, buoyed on the tides of babbling, baffled voices beyond the Kettle.

It was when someone grabbed her arm and hauled her upright that the moment she was wrapped in shattered outward into the progression of time. Hands sticky with Mal’s blood and the terrible beauty of a golden door slamming shut burning in her heart, Alina looked across the room and saw only more ruin. Tolya’s massive form lay splayed upon the floor, his eyes as open and unseeing as Mal’s. Bullet holes and blood were everywhere. Other bodies.

The Apparat’s voice. She could barely hear him. “Take the Sankta to her chamber.”

And Alina screamed, a scraped, wordless howl. She stretched with all of her being for the light that she knew lay somewhere beyond the darkness that was all that showed above the hearths. It was a cry as much as the one that left her lips, filled with grief and rage and grasping for a power, for a miracle, for anything at all. So very close, and yet—

The shadows lurched.

_Alina. . . ._

*

They would not tell her what had happened: who was alive and who was dead. In fact, no one save the Apparat spoke to her at all. He saw to it that she was confined to her room for days, speaking to her of the ongoing threats to her life, to her health. He lamented that she could not come forth to reassure her followers, even as he made it clear that she would not be permitted to do so. It was a farce on more than one front; each day, Alina imagined she looked less capable of shifting forth from the bed. Her cough had strengthened with a vengeance and gone were the days of sitting in the relative warmth of the Kettle with Genya.

She did not know how much time had passed. It could have been very little or eons. Alina measured time in the rasp of her breathing now, in the pain of her ribs as she coughed. She felt light and fluttery, as though only pain weigh weighted her down and without it she might blow away. She wanted to do so, to disappear into the wind that never visited these chambers. The cold never left her now, burrowed deep into her bones. Despite having lived so much of her life in a state of never quite being warm, quite rested, quite recovered from any exertion, her time without that constant burden taxing her was not something she had been eager to hold onto. And so its return was perhaps more of a shock than it would otherwise have been. But not too much of one - ‘shock’ implied more emotion than Alina could conjure right now, for anything. Despair gripped her with relentless claws. She huddled in her bed, aching, cold, and empty of heart.

She still did not know if any of the sad remnants of the Second Army had survived since she last saw them. Had the Grisha who lived through the battle been executed afterward? Had those she had not seen died beyond the Kettle or escaped, only to die in the passages?

Sometimes, she crept out of the bed and to the door, crouching on the cold stone floor, ear close to the latch as she strained to hear something, while praying the Priestguard stationed outside did not catch her at it.

She heard frequent movement through the corridors, the low frequency of conversation. But never a voice she recognized as one of her companions. She could only wait there so long before the cold leeching through her from the floor and abandonment became too much.

Back to huddling in bed, back to straining so hard her head would hurt mercilessly, to summon even a small glow. The best she could do was make the shadows buck along the lines of the walls. But day by day, even that grew harder.

Then one day, the Apparat came to her room again.

*

“Alina Starkov,” he said. It was an intonation in manner, as if she were not powerless, weak, huddled in a bed. As if she permitted him here and he beseeched her notice. She felt unpleasantly exposed being forced to receive him while she was in bed, despite the coverage of her garments and the covers pulled up high. It was a different sort of exposure than physical. She felt her weakness laid out like raw meat on a butcher’s counter, the bloody truth revealed. The smell of him, death and dirt, made her skin crawl even more than it ever had before, made her feel unclean in some fundamental way. He smiled at her in a beneficent manner and she wanted to cringe from his dark gums and fuzzed teeth.

“It is unfortunate you are still feeling so poorly,” he began, as though he had nothing to do with that, as if “poorly” were not a deeply inadequate description of her state at this point. Because she was going to die: Alina felt it in her bones.

“But nevertheless, I must leave you for a time. Word must continue to spread of your presence and—” His smile grew. “-what it means.

“I will visit again upon my return.” And though he bowed with the air of that false deference, she saw in his eyes that he little enough ever expected to see her - living - again.

*

Alina’s eyes opened. It was a slow, pained thing: her eyelids ached and her lashes clung crustily to one another. From somewhere beyond her door pounded the sounds of gunfire and yelling. Too much a reminder of the catastrophe in the Kettle, her pulse surged enough to dizzy her, even lying down as she was. The storm of running,, more yelling. Screams.

Boots pounded, very near her door. Scrabbling at the lock and the babble of frantic voices.

“. . .the only way. . . He’ll not. . .if she. . . “

The door opened to reveal one of the Sol Soldat and a Priestguard. The former was very young, as so many of them were, eyes wide with fear and uncertainty. The Priestguard looked panicked in a crazed sort of way, his rifle clasped to white knuckledness in his hands. As his eyes fell on her, one hand went to a knife at his belt. Her pulse leapt again and she tried to move.

The sounds from the corridor were louder now, the sounds of chaos. She could see people fleeing past.

Whip crack.

With a dark wisp of smoke, the Priestguard’s torso separated and fell, blood pumping out onto the floor. The boy near him was headless.

Her chest gripped so tight at that she thought her heart had outright seized. Because she could not summon the light but tried so hard in her terror, the shadows jumped.

He appeared in the doorway, an inky black stain against the uncertain lights of the passageway. Alina tried to sit up, but the pounding of her heart and lack of food swept another wave of dizziness through her.

She could only imagine what she looked like, her mirror the dawning shock upon the Darkling’s pale features. Pale herself, to a sickly mushroom shade, drawn in the lines of illness and fear and grief. Did she look even more terrible than she had after the fall of the chapel in Os Alta? But it did not stop him: he stepped over the spreading pool of blood without really seeming to see it. Alina could not extract herself from the bed and even if she could have done so, there was nowhere to which she could run. He was between her and the door, he was right there and there was nothing she could do but watch.

And she fought in the only way left to her, defending those that she could only hope might still be alive. With a calculated decision, she took hold of the horror of her condition and discarded thought of shame like so much rubbish.

“Don't hurt them.” With every hoarded ounce of strength she had left, Alina shoved herself upright. “Don’t hurt them.” It was a gasp and tears spilled down her cheeks. “Don’t hurt them, don’t hurt them, _don’t hurt them_.”

She began to cough. Blackness spattered her vision with each heave and further speech was impossible. She tried it anyway and choked on the words, wielding the semblance of madness as the only weapon she had. Her name - it sounded so quiet - and hands grasping at her shoulders. The bark of an order and the sound of boots hammering the stone floors of the passage as they came into the room.

The prickle-pain of a Corporalki’s healing, but what griped her was no simple wound. She fought as hard as she could to retain consciousness, but darkness clouded her vision and existence came to her in staccato bursts of sensation without sight. Fully in the grip of violent shivers, she felt the press of fabric. The world lurched sickeningly and was left behind. Or - no, it was only the bed. The shifting of an arm hooked beneath her knees. The rumbling of a voice: why did she feel it more than hear it?

Darkness came and she knew nothing more.


End file.
